About Me

Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. Author of FREEDOM OF RELIGION AND THE SECULAR STATE (2012), HUMANITY ENHANCED (2014), and THE MYSTERY OF MORAL AUTHORITY (2016).

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Richard Garner's back-cover endorsement of The Mystery of Moral Authority

“The
mystery of moral authority is that we persist in attributing objective and
inescapable authority to moral judgments even though there are so many reasons
not to do so. The Mystery of Moral
Authority is an accessible, up-to-date, thorough, convincing, and
fair-minded attempt to show that the ‘mystery of moral authority’ has not been,
and most likely will not be, solved. To solve it one would need to explain the
source of the allegedly inescapable objective authority that is commonly
thought to characterize moral judgments.

In this
book Blackford recommends that we replace the idea of morality as a collection
of truths about how we ought to live with the idea that it is a modifiable
social technology aimed at finding ways to live in groups. This realization
frees us to replace outmoded moral norms with practical ones more appropriate
to our present needs and circumstances.”

–Richard
Garner, Professor Emeritus at The Ohio State University, US, and author of Beyond Morality